Accounting nightmare. It records all of Ukraine’s wounds and deletes what it has saved

Marco Travaglio writes that Ukraine, “partly thanks to our aid”, has lost 21 per cent of its territory, its wealthiest regions, much of its access to the sea, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and millions of people. The tragedy he describes is true. The causal link he suggests is false. The correct comparison is not between an armed Ukraine and a Ukraine that remained at peace, but between a Ukraine supported by the West and a Ukraine left to fend for itself in the face of an invasion aimed at capturing Kyiv, overthrowing the government and bringing the country back under Russian control. Travaglio counts what Ukraine has lost, not what it has prevented Putin from conquering. The territory currently controlled by Russia amounts to around 20 per cent and includes Crimea and parts of the Donbas that have been occupied since 2014. Since February 2022, Moscow has conquered around 12 per cent of Ukrainian territory, having come much closer to its initial objectives in the first few weeks. By autumn 2022, Kyiv had recaptured around 75,000 square kilometres. It fails to mention that the capital has not fallen, that the government has not been overthrown, that the Russian army has been repelled from the north, that Kherson has been liberated, and that strategic cities such as Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Odessa have remained under Ukrainian control. Even the phrase about ‘three-quarters of the access to the sea’ omits a crucial element. Ukraine has not lost the Black Sea: it retains Odessa and other ports, has forced the Russian fleet to withdraw from Sevastopol and has opened a maritime corridor for exports.

Travaglio then speaks of “hundreds of thousands of lost soldiers” without distinguishing between the dead, the wounded and the missing, and cites the figure of eight to ten million expatriates by combining different categories. Refugees abroad and internally displaced persons are both tragedies, but they are not the same thing. Two days ago, Elly Schlein told Il Foglio that the PD had voted “wholeheartedly” to support Ukraine by all necessary means because Putin had carried out a criminal invasion and because European borders cannot be redrawn by force. Giorgia Meloni, on the right, continues to support Italian military aid. On this point, there is no political opportunism, but rather a recognition of reality: the aggressor is Moscow, the victim is Kyiv. Western weapons have not spared Ukraine a tragedy. They have prevented it from being wiped off the map. They have prevented Putin from achieving everything he wanted, defended a European state and made the invasion more costly and less advantageous. Travaglio looks at the blows suffered by the victim and attributes them to the bulletproof vest. Schlein and Meloni, with different backgrounds and ways of speaking, point to a simpler truth: taking off the vest does not stop the shooter.